Many enterprises implement quality assurance programs or similar efforts to ensure that their products meet the highest possible standards. In the area of software development, in particular, numerous guidelines exist for assuring the quality of development projects. For example, the ISO 9001 standard and the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) model both provide guidelines for conducting high quality software development projects.
CMMI designates five levels of organization and maturity in an enterprise's software development processes, with each level having a different set of requirements that must be met for CMMI certification to be achieved. The five CMMI levels, in order of least organized and least mature to most organized and most mature are initial, repeatable, defined, managed, and optimizing. It is generally desirable for an enterprise to reach the highest CMMI level possible.
Existing standards and guidelines such as CMMI typically provide general goals that, if met, are likely to result in a high quality product. Details on achieving those goals are typically not offered and typically must be developed by the enterprises following the standards.